Modern heroes die sadly in the dark they “ go gentle into that good night,” a pitiful spectacle which has bred in modern audiences an appetite for pathos that amounts to an addiction. What has vanished is the positive concept of men living fruitfully together. Their prevalent theme is frustration, the hero is either defeated by society or reduced by it to a negative conformity. Our modish playwrights see their heroes as islands, doomed to be swamped by an impersonal and vanquishing sea.
The second-earliest use of the phrase that I have found is from Vista and Vision, by the English theatre critic and author Kenneth Tynan (1927-80), published in The Observer (London, England) of 1 st April 1956: ( * Napoléon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French as Napoléon I from 1804 to 1814 and in 1815, was born in 1769 and died in 1821.)
Each generation since 1821 *, when the Little Corporal did “ not go gentle into that good night,” has had its say on what he stood for and what he stood against. The literature on the “Little Corporal” is great. review published in the Chicago Daily Tribune ( Chicago, Illinois) of 11 th May 1952: Helena: The Journals of General Bertrand from January to May of 1821,” deciphered and annotated by Paul Fleuriot de Langle, translated by Frances Hume. The earliest use of the phrase that I have found is from the review by Richard M. (The publication details are from the website Dylan Thomas.)ĭylan Thomas’s phrase has been misquoted as Do not go gently into that good night-as in the obituary of the poet, published in the Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, California) of 10 th November 1953:Īmong his best-known poems is “ Do Not Go Gently into that Good Night.” It expresses the need for a purposeful and positive attitude toward death, rather than a defeatist one. Dent & Sons Ltd.), published on 10 th November 1952. – In Country Sleep and Other Poems (New York: New Directions), published on 28 th February 1952 in a limited signed edition of 100 copies, followed by a trade edition Rage, rage against the dying of the light.įirst published in Botteghe Oscure: quaderno VIII, II semestre 1951 (Roma: Arnoldo Mondadori), Do not go gentle into that good night appeared in 1952 in two collections of poems by Dylan Thomas:
Old age should burn and rave at close of day It alludes to Do not go gentle into that good night, used as the title of, and in, a poem by the Welsh poet Dylan Marlais Thomas (1914-53)-this is the first stanza: The phrase (not) to go gentle into that good night, also (not) to go gently into that good night, means (not) to give up or acquiesce, especially to death, without a struggle.
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